PORTLAND, Ore. — Pawn shops across the Portland metro are booming with business amid times of inflation. Josh Oller, the owner of Silver Lining Jewelry and Loan on Northeast Sandy Boulevard, said his shop has been busy with people pawning and buying items for a cheaper price.
"We have plenty of product here," Oller said. "Same product people find in the stores, we offer major discounts off of that."
Alan Ritter, an avid fisherman and a Silver Lining customer, has no complains on the deals he has found on brand new fishing gear.
"It's expensive, one-hundred and fifty dollars a reel, seventy-five dollars a pole, if I come here I can get it reduced to seventy-five or forty percent off," Ritter said.
State licensed pawn shops are very important for working class families, according to Oller. He said he's also seen an influx of people getting short term collateral loans.
"You bring in an item of collateral, the clerk up at the window can sit down with you and we can determine together what we can loan against that item," Oller said.
Over at Pawn Central, owners and sisters Sarah and Tawnya Pearson said they've been seeing an influx in people as well.
"People coming in all the time due to gas, unemployment, groceries, everything just to make rent," Tawnya Pearson said.
Although the city of Portland has seen an increase in shoplifting cases in recent months. These two local pawn shop owners said there's ways to make sure the stuff they're getting isn't stolen.
"We not only get the pawners' drivers license, we get their thumb print, we ask them where they got the item from, every item we get we send a picture to the police," Sarah Pearson said.